Identity, Individual and Society Relationship - Essay Example

?Critically discuss the concept of ‘identity’ using one sociological perspective on the relationship between the individual and society. Human life is very complex and it is often difficult to understand how and why individuals develop their own personal identity alongside all the other individuals in society. Each person is clearly different, and at the same time all people in a society share some elements in common. Sociologists use several different approaches to explore the relationship between the individual and society, and although there is no single explanation that explains everything, there are useful insights to be gained from each of the main perspectives. Structuralists concentrate on the groups and organizations that exist, and examine the way that people fit into certain fixed and required roles in society, while symbolic interactionists are more concerned with the individual’s own free will, and the choices that are made by each person when they take part in all the actions of everyday life. These are the main poles of thought, but there are many intermediary positions, including structural functionalists and conflict theorists. This paper first briefly examines the concept of identity using the structural and functionalist and conflict approaches. It then discusses the symbolic interactionist perspective in greater details and explores how a person shapes his or her identity through contact with other people, giving meaning to his or her own identity through the exercise of choice. One of the most fundamental issues in both sociology and psychology has been the “nature/nurture” debate. When a child is born it has a physical appearance that relates to the genes it has inherited from its parents, but it appears to have very little understanding of its own behaviour, self and identity. This only develops over time. The question that scientists have tried to work out is how much of that identity is hereditary, and how much is acquired through interaction with the environment, including objects and other people, notably parents at first, and then peers and school later. Clearly both inherited and learned factors play a role, but this still does not explain exactly how a child acquires the identity that it assumes as an adult. Early sociological theories tended towards the structural functionalist approach, for example the work of Foucault stressed the constraining nature of all the social organizations that exist. His study on the evolution of prisons through the ages (Foucault, 1995) illustrated how the expectations that were made of individuals when they were disciplined, affected their identity. The act of confining someone in a small space, and curtailing his or her liberty to move around, as well as imposing a rigid timetable, and certain meek and submissive behaviors, has a physical impact upon a person’s body, as well as on the mind. This concerted exercise of power changes the identity of the individual, often for the worse, since it imposes an alien role upon that person. Imprisonment does not just judge the crimes, but it also judges the individual. (Smart, 1992, p. 75) Later scholars have applied these insights to feminism (Butler, 1993) and homosexuality (McWhorter, 1999), showing how the power of heterosexual males has been used to marginalize identities which are not similar to their own. The usefulness of this analysis is that it pinpoints the issue of power as one which affects identity, both of those in positions of power and those in positions of relative weakness. It also draws attention to the way that a person’s physical body is closely connected with his or her identity and can be manipulated by society to produce predictable outcomes that suit the needs of organizations. Sociologists following the ideas of Karl Marx consider a much wider class-based hierarchy which again imposes external structures upon an individual. The roles which a person is free to take are allocated according to the class system, which implies that a person is not free to create his or her own identity, but is destined to suffer enforced role identities, unless a collective struggle removes the upper class ability to determine what happens to the lower classes. This political argument hypothesizes that the self-interest of the powerful constrains and even determines the identities of the less powerful. A very influential twentieth century sociologist Talcott Parsons developed a strongly structuralist analysis of human behavior, and applied it to contexts like education and hospitals, showing how the rules and norms of these institutions dictate what sort of identity a person must assume, either temporarily, as for example when a person is sick and must submit to the regime, or permanently, as for example when a person becomes a doctor or nurse and plays the relevant role for that job title (Parsons, 1951). Such role playing need not involve conflict, since there is a huge weight of convention that people naturally adapt to. The trouble with all of these structuralist views is that they tend to imply that a person is not free to construct his or her own identity, and must at best make a choice between a limited set of roles which are laid down by the environment into which a person is born. On a very large scale, there is some truth in this observation, because a person born into extreme poverty, for example, may not choose to go to college and become a stockbroker. Within smaller groups, however, there is evidence that people do in fact choose to adopt different identities, even within severe constraints. Not all disadvantaged youths turn to criminality, and many people who are afforded the privilege of private schools and a university education choose to drop out and pursue alternative lifestyles to the one that their parents attempted to program them into. The structuralist functionalist approach, therefore, does not adequately cover the variation that occurs in the way that people form an identity. An interesting debate from the symbolic-interactionist perspective is how the modern person constructs an identity out of all the potential interactions that exist in society. The work of Shilling for example, has explored how the “rise of the body” (Shilling, 2005, p. 761) in modern sociology has come to be more aware of the ways that embodied individuals interact in society. The body can be a locus of oppression, as observed by Foucault, but it can also be a medium for self-expression. In a consumer-driven society there is great pressure from advertising to adhere to social norms, but at the same time there is significant choice between different body images which can be very useful in expressing and especially constructing a person’s identity. It is no coincidence that young people especially are drawn to body modification such as tattoos and piercings in order to change their physical appearance. This exercise of control and creativity is a way of using the body to construct a particular “look” to reflect the way that the person wants to be perceived. Adolescents grow into an adult identity, often experimenting with different styles, using clothes, makeup, slimming, exercising and numerous other body projects until they achieve a body which matches their own aspirations, or at least goes some way towards this goal. Because of the inequalities that exist in society, there are some circumstances where the construction of identity through body modification is skewed towards a desire for conformity. Women are under pressure to remain youthful, because the material advantages available to younger woman in the workplace and in relationships are greater than those available to older women. Deciding to undergo cosmetic surgery can be a way of taking control of one’s identity but can also be a symptom of vulnerability, whereby an individual seeks to escape from the tyranny of a body which does not represent the identity that is desired. (Gimlin, 2006, p. 702) This “dys-appearance” highlights how important the body is for a person’s identity, but also how it is not the only, nor perhaps even the main, expression of that inner identity. An individual can perceive of a self that is different from the actual physical body that is present. The symbolic-interactionist approach is very informative also in analysing the way that modern technology is for the first time allowing people to experiment with a number of different representations of their own body. In digital technology, for example, people are able to create whole new virtual bodies, and to experience real time interactions with others using similarly invented bodily forms. In a post-modern society where religions are losing influence, and people are left to construct their own meanings, there is emerging evidence that this new pre-occupation with the body, whether real or virtual, is taking on some elements of the sacred (Varga, 2005). It has also been argued that the privileging of some types of body over others, in the medical world and in the media, has provoked a very intensive re-examination of how social interaction is affected by the body, and how in turn this relates to identity. (Witz, 2000) Specific situations like pregnancy have been analyzed to illustrate the complex relationship that modern women have with their own body. Far from supporting either the structural functionist paradigm, or the symbolic interactionist paradigm, an empirical study of women’s experience of pregnancy concluded that some women see pregnancy as part of an ongoing body project, constructing a transition into a motherhood identity, while others saw it as a welcome release from the usual pressure to maintain just such a body project (Warren and Brewis, 2004). In conclusion, then, it is clear that structural-functionalist approaches have contributed to an understanding of how society influences and limits the potential for identity formation. The symbolic interactionist approach, however, gives a more nuanced understanding of how people step out of the narrow choices that seem to be on offer. It is only in interaction with other embodied human beings, that people learn how to bring their internal idea of self into alignment with their bodily representation of self, and this a conscious act of will, rather than a necessary outcome of social forces. References Butler, J. 1993. Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Second Vintage Books, pp. 3-31. Gimlin, D. 2006. The Absent Body Project: Cosmetic Surgery as a Response to Bodily Dys-appearance. Sociology. 40 (4), pp. 699–716 . McWhorter, L. 1999. Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Parsons, T. 1951. The Social System. New York: The Free Press. Shilling, C. 2005. The Rise of the Body and the Development of Sociology. Sociology, 39 (4), pp. 761–767 Smart,B. 2002. Michel Foucault. London : Routledge. Varga, I. 2005. The body – the New Sacred? The Body in Hypermodernity. Current Sociology 53 (2), pp. 209-235. Warren, S. and Brewis, J. 2004. Matter over Mind? Examining the Experience of Pregnancy. Sociology 38 (2), pp. 219-236. Witz, A. 2000. Whose Body Matters? Feminist Sociology and the Corporeal Sociology and Feminism. Body Society 6 (1), pp. 1-24. Read More